EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY

John F. Jones
The paradox of existential psychology is that in reality the movement started
neither with an existential philosopher nor with a psychologist, but with a Danish
Lutheran theologian, Kierkegaard. Reacting against the rationalism of Hegel
and the abstract epistemology of Descartes, Kierkegaard reinstated the individual
in European thought, and reaffirmed man's power to know what is most funda-
mental to the human condition — being. The ontology of Kierkegaard is both
objective and subjective. "The objective accent falls on what is said, the sub-
jective falls on how it is said."1 Being — that which is — can only be known by
the person himself, and so it is of necessity subjective, but it is known immediately,
for the person is in-the-world and has no need to argue to the outside world or to
his own existence, as Descartes believed. The themes that we find in existential
philosophy and psychology we find first in Kierkegaard: being and becoming, the
possibilty of failure and non-being, loneliness and the courage necessary to face
this, "the dauntlessness of a religious man answerable to God",2 death, anxiety,
hope. In each of the existentialists who come after Kierkegaard — Heidegger,
Jaspers, Sartre, Camus, Marcel — the same problems are faced, although the
answers are not always similar, Heidegger lays stress on human existence and
being, Sartre, who is influenced by Heidegger, emphasizes non-being and sees
man in an essentially ridiculous position without hope ("Man is a useless passion"),
Jaspers searches for man's meaning In the face of death and destruction, and Marcel
returns to Kierkegaard's loneliness and his hope in God.
This diversity of approach must lead one to conclude that, strictly speaking,
there is no such thing as existential philosophy — rather, there are many existen-
tial philosophies whose common point of departure is man-in-the-world. It is
even impossible to say that the existentialists have a single ontology, although they
do start with being as a given fact, as something known and felt immediately,
for they regard traditional Cartesian problems of epistemology as essentially false
problems which start with questions to which the answer has already been given
by the prior experience and knowledge of reality. Man-in-situation: here the
problem begins and, in a sense, ends; for no answer which abstracts from the
individual in his here-and-now situation is considered adequate. One other reality
which all existentials stress is man's freedom and the loneliness of his individual
choice. As Sartre phrases it, man is "condemned to freedom", which freedom is,
like being, experienced immediately by man and cannot be denied.
European psychology has always been closely linked to philosophy. In many
European universities the study of the one involves the study of the other. This
philosophical orientation is very marked in central-European psychotherapy. Lead-
ing psychotherapists like the German Karl Jaspers and the Swiss Binswanger are
also outsanding philosophers. Due to such men as these existential psychology
has gained prominence in central Europe since the war. Undoubtedly the move-
ment is in part a reaction against the experience of totalitarianism. In France,
Sartre has elaborated his own existential psychoanalysis, but Sartre is not a psycho-
therapist, and, despite his literary genius and his influence on post-war culture in
Europe, he has not had the same effect on the professional psychotherapists as
Jaspers or Binswanger or Frankl have had. At any rate, American psychology, to
the extent that it has been influenced, seems to have been influenced more by the
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central Europeans than by the French. Existential psychology in the States is
less than ten years old and has not yet been integrated into the general field of
psychotherapy. However, as Carl Rogers has indicated, it is an approach which,
if not popular with learning theorists, should find a home in the other humanistic
school of psychotherapy that is concerned with the "existing, becoming, emerging,
experiencing being."3 (Rogers himself, incidentally, does not see what he calls
the "objective" and "existential" schools of psychotherapy as totally divergent and
irreconcilable, and suggests empirical research as the point at which reconciliation
may be attempted.)

The main themes of existential psychology

A definition of existential psychology is even more difficult than a definition
of existentialism, for it brings in the additional element of therapy. Viktor Frank!
when asked to define his own brand of existential psychotherapy, logotherapy,
asked his questioner what psychoanalysis was. When he was told that during
psychoanalysis the patient must lie down on a couch and tell his analyst things
that are sometimes very disagreeable to tell, Frankl replied, with his tongue in
his cheek, that in logotherapy the patient must remain sitting erect and must learn
things that are sometimes very disagreeable to hear. Perhaps Frankl's somewhat
facetious definition does give us a lead in determining some of the main charac-
teristics of existential psychology. Man, the existentialists would say, is not driven
by his instincts, nor is he compartmentalized into id, ego and super-ego. The
existentialist psychologists are inclined to play down the unconscious, although
few would deny it outright as Sartre does. The individual is responsible for his
choices and he must learn to choose. May quotes Kierkegaard as saying, "Truth
exists for the individual only as he himself produces it in action." Insight is not
sufficient. The psychotherapist helps the individual to choose, not by forcing
a choice on him but by examining with him his real situation and its real, though
personal, meaning. The therapist is not necessarily neutral; therapy (for some
existential psychologists at least) is a human interpersonal encounter. To say that
these are the characteristics of all existential psychology would be to exaggerate.
Existential psychology is not, any more than existentialism itself, one, but many.
Seeking a common denominator one might say that in its essence existential psy-
chology is concerned with the total man-in-situation, a man who chooses and a
situation which is real.
A look at the main themes of existential psychology will be of assistance in
picking out some of the common points of view as well as the differences that
exist among its adherents. These themes may be conveniently grouped as follows:
I. Being, becoming, non-being or nothing;
II. Separation, death, loneliness, alienation;
III. Responsibility, freedom, choice;
IV. Anxiety, dread, guilt;
V. Questioning, absurdity, meaning.

I. Being, becoming, non-being or nothing

Sartre, in proposing the foundation for existential psychoanalysis, distinguish-
ed two types of being: Being-In-Itself (L'etre en-soi) which is the being of
objects without choice, and Being-For-Itself (L'etre-pour-soi), the being of man.

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 Being-For-Itself involves becoming, for man's nature is never "to be" but always
"to-be-about-to-be." "Thus man is what he is not, for his life is a continual
projecting towards a future not yet realized. He is not what he is, for at every
moment he must remake himself by a free choice." This orientation towards
the future is very common among the existential psychologists, and it includes the
notion of 'nothing', since what is yet to come is by definition non-being at the
moment. According to some existential psychologists, notably Sartre, man is
forever straining towards this non-being, since whenever he achieves any status,
he must reject it, looking forward indefinitely. Precisely because the goal of
psychoanalytic inquiry must be to discover a choice and not a state, the investigator
must recall that his object is not a datum buried in the darkness of the unconscious
but a free, conscious determination. While Sartre rejects the unconscious, he
accepts the need of analysis and conceptualization to discover this fundamental
choice or what he calls the original project. Since psychoanalysis seeks a choice
of being at the same time as a being, it must reduce particular behaviour patterns
to fundamental relations — not of sexuality or will to power, but being — which
are expressed in this behaviour.

II. Separation, death, loneliness, alienation

According to the existentialists, death permeates being-in-the-world. Facing
death, freeing oneself for one's own death is the first step in the philosophical
labour of salvaging the authentic self from accidental dependencies and distractions,
from the non-real. Weigert, in an exposition of Ludwig Binswanger's concept of
Care writes, "In facing death and more than death, the nothingness that surrounds
being-in-the-world, existence braces itself for the willingness to experience and
accept anxiety and therewith to surmount the helpless submission to the automatic
rulings of Care. The psychiatrist would call the process the growing awareness
of resistence, of the automatic defences against anxiety.''4
This loneliness which is experienced most dramatically in death is an abiding
mark of the human condition and finds its base in subjectivity. For, while a
man has an immediate experience of being, it is his own being which he is
experiencing. One is reminded of Arthur Miller's remark, "We are prisoners in
our own skin." For some existentialists like Sartre, this imprisonment is complete
and final, "Hell is other people," Sartre wrote in No Exit. For other existen-
tialists, particularly Gabriel Marcel, this loneliness, while it is a fact of existence,
is not complete. We enjoy the presence of other people, of God. It is interest-
ing to see Hora, when describing existential group psychotherapy, referring to
Martin Buber's phrase, "mutual spiritual inclusion," and to the "intersubjectivity"
of Marcel. Hora's description of the group process in psychotherapy reveals the
importance of this intersubjectivity. "From the practical standpoint of group
psychotherapy, we can say that the process revolves around a gradual renunciation
of all acting-out needs. This leads the group members to an increased capacity
to experience and relate to one another not as objects but as 'existents', being
together and communicating with one another in an experiential way. Com-
munication in the group is to be elevated to the highest ethical plane, where
messages are submitted for consideration rather than used to influence, or coerce,
or mislead the recipient. Freedom to be what one is in contrast to freedom to do
something to someone becomes an important value consideration of this group
process."5
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III. Responsibility, freedom, choice
Rollo May has criticized traditional Freudean psychotherapy for its built-in
tendency of inviting the patient to relinquish his position as the deciding agent.
Freud, of course, was reacting in part to the Victorian notion that "will power"
was the sole determining factor in a man's life. In the past few years "ego
psychology" has again handed over to the ego the functions of autonomy, sense
of identity, and the synthesis of experience. Few psychologists would deny the
unconscious or the instincts, but they do insist that in the uncovering of instinctual
forces, the patient is orienting himself in some particular way to the data and thus
is engaged in some choice, and is experiencing some freedom, no matter how
subtle. This freedom of choice and its accompanying responsibility are at the
centre of existentialism. Tillich has put it this way, "Man becomes truly human
only at the moment of decision."
IV. Anxiety, dread guilt
Popular accounts of existentialism give great prominence to angst. This
emphasis probably reflects a core problem of society, and, of course, anxiety is
quite properly associated with existentialism. The anxiety is explained in different
ways, though all would agree that it must be distinguished from fear which is
the concrete dread of a real object. Anxiety is more vague and it is more difficult
to pin down, although it is acutely felt. Heidegger, for whom anxiety is indefinite,
considers that it belongs to being-in-the-world, and being-in-the-world is funda-
mentally not only anxious, but also guilty. Guilt, in Heidegger's terms (and
Binswanger follows Heidegger in this), means the inescapable incompletion and
imperfection that existence in the world implies, a non-fulfillment' of our infinite
potentialities. Frankl would also agree that this existential vacuum is a desire
for fulfillment, but he would stress another component of anxiety, meaningless-
ness. Every age, according to Frankl, has its collective neurosis, and every age
needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is
the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal
form of nihilism — a denial of meaning. A psychotherapy which reflects a
nihilistic or pandeterministic philosophy perpetuates the neurosis.

V. Questioning, absurdity, meaning

Closely allied to anxiety, indeed inseparable from it, is doubt and questioning.
The existence of death forces the individual to question his own and other people's
values. For some, Camus for instance, life is essentially absurd and man's only
dignified answer is heroic defiance. Marcel, on the other hand, postulates that
life finds its meaning in presence — the presence of others and, ultimately, the
presence of God. Frankl's chief concern is in "the will to meaning", and he
builds his own existential psychology — logotherapy — around this concept. This
"will to meaning" is distinguished from the pleasure principle or the will to power.
The will to meaning, however, is not meant to imply the invention of meaning, but
rather its discovery. "According to Jean-Paul Sartre, man invents himself, he
designs his own 'essence', that is to say, what he essentially is, including what he
should be or ought to become. However, I think that the meaning of our exist-
ence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected."6 Life's meaning, it should
be noted, cannot be explained to a patient by the therapist in general terms, because

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the answer must refer to the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life, a concrete assignment.
Frankl quotes Nietzsche in support of his view of the necessity of a meaning in
life; "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" Logotherapy
tries to make the patient aware of his sense of responsibility, but it does not seek
to impose a value. The therapist is comparable to the eye specialist who enables
the patient to see the world as it is, making the whole spectrum of meaning and
values conscious and visible. The world is presented as an instrument of self-
actualization. In Frankl's view, we can discover the meaning of life in three ways;
by doing some deed, by experiencing a value, such as love of someone, and by
suffering.

The existential bases of psychotherapy

Existential psychology would hold that the dynamic elements of personality
can only be understood in the context of an existing, living person, that is to say,
in their ontological context. Rollo May, in a paper entitled "The Existential
Bases of Psychotherapy", singles out the6 ontological characteristics which con-
stitute the patient as an existing person:
1. Neurosis is precisely the method the individual uses to preserve his own
centre, his own existence.
2. Every existing person has the character of self-affirmation, the need to
preserve what May calls "centredness".
3. All existing persons have the need and possibility of going out from
their "centredness" to participate in other beings.
4. The subjective side of "centredness" is awareness.
5. The uniquely human form of awareness is self-consciousness.
6. Anxiety is the state of the human being in the struggle against that
which would destroy his being.
The importance of establishing the ontological characteristics of a patient
lies in the fact that such a structure can serve as a base for a science that will not
fragmentize man nor destroy his totality.

Implications for Social Work

Gordon Hamilton has suggested that knowledge of a client's environment,
both immediate and historical, the degree of pathology, the adaptive patterns and
the areas of disturbance must always be approached in terms of the specific
problem or request.7 Social casework is concerned with "present need". Secondly,
the Gestalt is made up of the individual interacting with his environment, a whole
of interdependent parts. Casework is also concerned with the "person-in-situa-
tion". The implication of these statements is, as Ripple and others have shown:
(1) the problem is an immediate difficulty identified as requiring solution rather
than an aggregation of difficulties or symptoms, and (2) the problem is described
in terms of the person-in-situation rather than in terms of a problem per se or in
isolation.8
The most significant contribution that existential psychology can make is to
underscore the subjective, personal factors which apply directly to the unique,
responsible individual. Such an emphasis will tend to safeguard and develop the
cient's self-determination, and to enhance motivation. . At the same time this
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approach takes into account the total environment of the client without divorcing
the environment from the person. The present-future orientation of existential
psychology protects the realistic approach of casework. The client always re-
mains the person-in-situation, the existential man.

NOTES
1 S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Oxford University Press, (D. F. Swen-
son, trans.), p. 68.
2 S. Kiergekaard, The Present Age, Oxford University Press, 1940. (A Dru, trans.), p. 30.
3 Carl R. Rogers, "Two Divergent Trends''. In Existential Psychology (Rollo May, ed.),
New York, Random House, 1960, p. 92.
4. E. Weigert, "Existentialism and Its Relation to Psychotherapy". Psychiatry, 12:400 (1949),
402.
5 T. Hora, "Existential Group Psychotherapy". American Journal of Psychotherapy, 13:91
(1959), 89.
6 Rollo May (ed.), Existential Psychology, New York, Random House, 1961.
7 Gordon Hamilton, Theory and Practice of Social Casework, New York, Columbia Univer-
'sity Press, (Revised edit.), 1964. pp. 213 ff.
8 L. Ripple, E. Alexander and B.W. Polemis, Motivation, Capacity, and Opportunity, Univer-
sity Press, 1964, p. 23.

Selected Bibliography
Camus, A., The Myth of Sisyphus, New York, Vintage, 1942.
Creegan, R.F., "Phenomenology". In P.L. Harriman (ed.). Encyclopedia of Psy-
chology, New York: Philosophical Library, 1946, pp. 512-515.
Frankl, V.E., Man's Search For Meaning, Boston, Beacon Press, 1963.
Fromm, E., Man For Himself, New York: Rinehart, 1947.
Heinemann, F.H., Existentialism and the Modern Predicament, New York, Harper,
1958.
Hora, T., "Existential Group Psychotherapy", American Journal Psychotherapy,
1959, 13, 83-92.
May, Rollo (ed.), Existential Psychology, N.Y., Random House, 1961. Papers
presented in the Symposium on Existential Psychology at the Annual Convention
of the American Psychological Association in Cincinnati in 1959.
Sartre, J.P., Existential Psychoanalysis, Chicago, Regnery, 1962.
Sartre, J.P., No Exit and Three Other Plays, New York: Vintage, 1955.
Weigert, E., "Existentialism and Its Relation to Psychotherapy", Psychiatry, 12:
399-412, 1949.
Weisman, A.D., The Existential Core of Psychoanalysis, Boston, Little Brown,
1962.

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